Business

Announcing a promotion and two recent additions to The Times' staff: Stacey Leasca Stacey Leasca has been named social media editor. Stacey will work with Jimmy Orr to direct our social media strategy across the newsroom. She and her team will work with writers and editors in all sections to enhance the reporting process, assist with breaking news coverage, increase reader engagement and expand the audience for our journalism. Stacey joined us last April and quickly became known through her lively coaching sessions, entertaining videos and fun blog posts.

At just 21, a kid from the San Fernando Valley named Jim Berk began work as a music teacher at Carson High School. Within a couple of years, the teacher, not much older than some of his students, had turned a woebegone marching band into one of the best in Southern California. Then Berk moved to struggling Hamilton High School to launch a music magnet program. It gained national acclaim and so many new students that officials reversed their threat to close the Westside campus. "The Wunderkind of education" the Times dubbed him in 1992.

Bill Elwell doesn't want any more customers, but they just keep coming. "Is McDonald's closed today?" he likes to grunt to those lined up outside his tiny burger stand in an industrial pocket of the San Fernando Valley. "Why is everyone here? Go down the street!" Elwell is 87 and cranky, and folks can't seem to get enough of him. It's been 49 years since Elwell took to the grill of his 10-by-20-foot burger stand on Oxnard Street where Van Nuys meets Sherman Oaks. He once flipped a burger from grill to floor to shush a customer complaining about too much mayonnaise.

Herbalife Ltd. said Thursday a new U.S. probe of the nutritional products maker would not affect its sponsorship of the Galaxy and other teams and athletes. The company, whose business practices have been publicly attacked by a Wall Street investment manager, said Wednesday it now was the subject of a civil probe by the Federal Trade Commission but provided no other details. Money manager Bill Ackman has alleged Herbalife, whose nutrition and weight-management products are sold by independent salespeople, is effectively a pyramid scheme.

Two hungry children were wandering the streets of South Los Angeles alone last week when they walked into a liquor store, searching for a loaf of bread. At one point, they nearly headed across busy Manchester Boulevard until a passerby intervened. The children's ages: 2 and 3. Both wore soiled diapers when authorities picked them up. This week, officials acknowledged that the children and their mother had been under the direct supervision of Los Angeles County's child protective services agency.

SAN FRANCISCO - Aaron Levie, the 29-year-old chief executive of Box Inc., walked the red carpet at the Oscars this year in a dark suit and tie, pressed white shirt and his trademark neon blue sneakers. "I asked about the sneaker dress code," said Levie, who like many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs doesn't like anything slowing him down, least of all a pair of dress shoes. "Apparently it was not a problem. " It was the movie industry's biggest night and Levie didn't waste any time talking up cloud computing to Hollywood stars including Harrison Ford.

It wasn't the shiny glass and steel of Honda Center that made Randy Carlyle feel nostalgic Monday. Nor was it conducting the Toronto Maple Leafs' morning skate beneath the Stanley Cup banner he helped the Ducks win in 2007. The sight of two people, anonymous to fans but touchstones to him, brought out the mellow side of this gruff, old-school coach when he returned to Anaheim for the first time since the Ducks fired him on Nov. 30, 2011. "When you meet the parking lot attendant, the guy at the top of the ramp that you know, and he's the guy that used to look after your wife and your kids when you came to the rink and he was always a big happy guy to say hello, it's an emotional time to see him," Carlyle said.

Re "Top House Republican proposes tax overhaul," Feb. 27 Your article misleadingly labeled the depreciation schedule for business aircraft as "special treatment. " The depreciation system that applies to the purchase of a business aircraft has been on the books for decades, and also applies to the purchase of delivery vehicles, trucks and forklifts. Unfortunately, each time someone mischaracterizes business aviation, they are really taking aim at an industry that generates more than 1 million American jobs and is responsible for more than $150 billion in economic impact.

Lucian Grainge has a vision for the future of the music business that bears scant resemblance to the traditional record company playbook. He is putting songs on smartphones in Africa, reviving moribund American record labels and making Lorde into a Grammy-winning global sensation. Above all, he wants to forge new partnerships with his industry's erstwhile adversaries - the technology firms that have upended the way people get their music. Skeptics question whether anyone can reverse the decline of an industry that has seen global sales plummet from $28 billion in 1999 to $16.5 billion in 2012.

A skin care specialist with a Hollywood celebrity clientele has been arrested and charged in a plot to hire a hit man to kill off a competitor who moved into her territory, authorities said. Dawn DaLuise, who owns Dawn DaLuise's Skin Refinery in West Hollywood, was arrested Wednesday and charged Friday with one count of solicitation of murder after detectives discovered an alleged plot to hire a man to kill her business rival, Gabriel Suarez, officials said. Records show Suarez operates Smooth Cheeks in the same block as DaLuise's business in the 8500 block of Santa Monica Boulevard.